The Boy In The Coffin

Gnossienne

(noun):

A moment of awareness that someone you've known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you've never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you because ultimately, neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.

Many know the old adage that Fate is a cruel thing. The poor and the unfortunate know the saying all too well. Bankruptcy, loneliness, heartbreak, loss—most are things that Gabriel Agreste had never known until about five years ago. That's because he had bent Fate to his will. He had built his life on its scarred back, from the ground up. Once he learned to manipulate the minds of other people, the cards suddenly fell in his favor. Meeting Audrey Bourgeois when he was nothing more than a young businessman was the only gift fate had given to him. The satisfaction of that gift became like the high of a street drug, and so he needed to have more. From then on, he seized Fate by the throat and demanded another fix every time he needed one until eventually, Fate became his slave.

That's just how things are. There was no other way to get what he wanted; to get the things that would help him live a comfortable life.

The last time he'd ever crush his foot into Fate's back was when his son, Adrien, was born and he had wed his beautiful wife, Emilie. Perhaps this was the start of a new chapter for Gabriel. This was the moment he had unshackled Fate. He didn't need the delicious drug of its gifts any longer. His new drug was his family.

But that was the biggest mistake Gabriel had ever made. He should have known better than to assume Fate wouldn't give him hell to pay for all he had stolen from it. It began with his wife. She was his light, more so than Adrien could ever hope to be, and he realized that after she fell into a coma. Because with her gone, looking into Adrien's eyes did not spark the same joy as it did when he looked into hers.

Fate had snuffed out her light, and he was forced to hide what little embers remained in his basement, desperately trying to rekindle it.

Even after all he had done, he still couldn't understand why Fate decided of all things it must take Emilie away from him. It could've had his company, his stocks, his home, even every penny in his name. Taking his wife was something Gabriel couldn't forgive. And so, he spent the last five years attempting to wrest it back into his grasp, to take control of his life again. But every time he came close, Fate slipped away from him. His frustration grew at the reminders that the world was no longer his, the biggest being the ghost of Fate beneath the soles of his designer shoes.

Now, Fate casts its cruel gaze upon him like a mother reprimanding her child as he sits beside his own lying still in a hospital bed. He only breathes with the help of a tube taped to his throat where the doctors had to cut it open. The fires from that night made Adrien impossible to intubate without making an incision.

It wasn't until this very moment that Gabriel realized he had failed. For a while, he danced in the fantasy he created in his mind that every akuma he let loose into the world was a step closer to grabbing hold of Fate's wrist and locking it up where it would never escape again. But he didn't see that he was nowhere close to that world. In fact, Fate was always twirling just out of reach, ensuring every attempt he made would keep it that way.

As it always should have been.

But with his eyes glued to this made-up world, he failed to keep Adrien in his peripherals. He didn't notice when Fate began to whisper in his ear, to use him just as Gabriel used it and Adrien. Fate had pitted him against his own son without his knowledge. And now it's much too late to see all his toiling has just played him right under Fate's foot.